PANJIM: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has approached Governor Mridula Sinha asking her for a check on the upcoming municipal elections to enable a free and fair election process.
NCP has raised questions regarding delimitation of wards and asked for it to be done in a free and fair manner. The election of municipalities in the State to be held on October 25, had proposed to increase the number of wards in seven civic bodies.
The party in its memorandum to Governor Mridula Sinha said that the BJP government made a mockery of ward delimitation during the village panchayat and zilla panchayat elections held in April-May 2012 and February-March 2015 respectively.
The party claims that the BJP used the delimitation of wards as a trick to “get an upper hand in the North Goa and South Goa zilla panchayat body,” without giving time for people to raise objections and raise their grievances against the move.
“By taking such an important decision arbitrarily, the BJP government deprived the rights of people of free and fair election to elect their representatives. Again the procedures of making adequate reservation for women, SC/ST communities were not followed properly by the government. A hue and cry was raised due to autocratic decision of the government, but it showed less respect for the grievance of people and conducted the zilla panchayat elections as per its whims and fancies,” NCP said in the memorandum.
The party demanded that in the delimitation process, the continuity of wards has to be strictly adhered to and not to use manipulative politics to accommodate BJP voters.
to help consolidate their chances at the elections. They have also demanded that each ward be constituted on the basis of numbers of voters without a vast difference in the voters of two wards.
They have also asked that the Governor to maintain surveillance on the entire process as empowered by the Constitution of India and have demanded delimitation draft rolls be published by mid-August so that citizens have enough time to raise their objections.
